


flashbacks, relapse, camera flash

by strawberrv



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: (promise), Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Dubious Consent, M/M, Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, just at one part, u get the idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-29 17:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrv/pseuds/strawberrv
Summary: when yuta was seventeen, he didn’t know the science. there are people who would say he has the “addict gene,” and there are people who would say he’s just unlucky, and there are people who would say it’s because his mom and dad got divorced, but when yuta is seventeen, he sees the reason. deep down, in a very very dark place he’s never been to before. it’s the first time he does ecstasy.





	1. ain't a pill that i didn't take

**Author's Note:**

> hello soooooo .... it's not any of my wips that i've had.. but it's nct ? a step in the right direction?  
basically this is just a vent fic ! i watched euphoria and stuff happened in my personal life to bring up some of the Trauma so i had to get this out of my system ! obvi partially inspired by euphoria (the chapter titles and the main title are all from the unreleased original song (vibes by labrinth) @ hbo PLEASE release the soundtrack) but most of it is drawn from personal experience as depressing as that is !  
SO as far as trigger warnings go, obviously. there is heavy discussion of drugs, drug use, addiction, etc. it's very detailed and could easily be triggering ! there is one scene in which it's implied that yuta is taken advantage of by a stranger while he's unable to consent, and he is also underage at the time. that event isn't discussed any further in the fic. if you would like to skip it, it starts at  
"the stranger stays with him"  
and ends at  
"time."  
thank u for checking this out, stay safe

what most people don’t realize about drugs, is that they’re everywhere. most people, _normal_ people, wouldn’t really know the first thing to do about looking for drugs. what most people don’t know is, that when you spend your whole life looking for something, you tend to find it. eventually. and not just once, but over, and over, and over again. and if you’re really unlucky, it starts looking for you, too, after a while.

but yuta didn’t know that, not when he was fifteen, staring at the slide of dirty bills from palm to palm, a powdery plastic bag shortly following. he was fascinated. he wanted to know everything about these people, he wanted to know how much money was exchanged, what exactly was in the bag, the circumstances surrounding it. _this,_ this was the world in which he belonged, surely, somewhere a little bit grimy, a little bit darker, somewhere fast and exciting and _real._

he felt almost stupid, standing a few paces away, clutching the straps of his backpack as he waited for the light to tell him he could walk. he felt extremely uncool, like if the people looked over, met his eyes, they’d assume he was a narc. give him dirty looks and maybe threaten him, if they really wanted trouble. he shivered at the thought of it.

but they didn’t look over. and then the light changed. and yuta walked away.

but not for very long.

\+ 

when yuta was sixteen, his parents got divorced. when yuta was sixteen, his friend offered him a white pill from an orange bottle; his sister had broken her leg that summer, and she didn’t finish the painkillers.

“like tylenol?” yuta asks, wrinkling his nose as he examines the fairly large tablet. his friend laughs, points to the letters engraved in the talcum.

“what does that say, nakamoto?”

yuta squints, sounding out the word.

“um. p… perc-oh-cet.”

“perc-_uh_-cet. it’s _not_ like tylenol. like… if tylenol was apricot la croix, percocet _is_ the apricot. you know?”

yuta doesn’t know. his heart is beating too fast in his chest, and he’s thinking about standing five paces from a drug deal last year, about white powder in a bag. also about his mom crying in her bedroom, and his little sister calling him last night from dad’s house. and he takes the pill.

at first it’s nothing, he’s just nervously shaking his leg for twenty minutes and half-watching an episode of spongebob his friend put on, but then it’s… good. like a warm, weighted blanket settled over his entire body. it’s like being bone-deep exhausted, except he’s not really tired. just… slow. he blinks and the sun’s gone down, and now they’re watching something else, but he can’t really remember when that happened.

“you should probably get home, right?” his friend says, and yuta blinks again, and another hour has passed, and his phone is ringing.

“hello?”

“yuta, get home, now. dinner’s gone cold.”

“oh… alright.”

a pause.

“are you ok? were you asleep?”

“no… not really,” he says, and his tongue feels like a dead fish in his mouth.

“just get home,” his mom says, and then hangs up.

the drive back is treacherous at best, and he just got his driver’s license last month, anyway, so this is a very, very bad idea, but he thinks he doesn’t feel as heavy as before, and it’s only a five minute drive back. he parks crooked in the driveway.

“there you are,” his mom says once he gets inside, sitting at the dining table with one of the scrapbooks in front of her.

“the soup’s in the fridge.”

“hmm,” yuta says, and goes to his room instead of the fridge, and sleeps for ten hours.

\+ 

when yuta was seventeen, he didn’t know the science. there are people who would say he has the “addict gene,” and there are people who would say he’s just unlucky, and there are people who would say it’s because his mom and dad got divorced, but when yuta is seventeen, he sees the reason. deep down, in a very very dark place he’s never been to before. it’s the first time he does ecstasy.

“it’s not laced, promise,” krystal says with a wink, rhinestones and glitter around her eyes catching the lights again and again as she does it. yuta gives her a dazzling grin, taking the pill from her palm and tossing it easily into his mouth. he grabs one of the drinks she’s holding to wash it down, and the vodka burns his throat, but the pill goes down smooth.

he’s never been to a rave before, but he’s having the time of his life. people will just introduce themselves, make out with you, and you’ll never see them again. krystal is a senior at his high school, like him, and she _loves_ raves. and she wears body glitter to school sometimes, so you know she’s legit.

time passes, and yuta thinks he dances with every single person in the world, and all of them are so much fun, and he doesn’t know it’s hitting until he can barely see and everything is like one thousand times more sparkly than it had been. he doesn’t realize he’s stopped dancing until the song changes, and he thinks he must have been standing here looking up at the pulsing colored lights for hours. he blinks, and he thinks he must have been forgetting to do that, too; he can feel his eyeliner thick between his lashes, running down his cheeks with sweat. that’s the other thing, he’s sweating more than every time he’s sweat in his life, _combined._ he doesn’t feel gross or sticky, though, everything feels like silk on his skin, it’s almost like swimming. he wants to dance again, but falls immediately backwards when he tries. someone catches him, asks if he’s ok, and he’s so, _so_ grateful, this person just saved his life, holy shit, and they say,

“i mean, i don’t think you would’ve _died,”_ and yuta realizes he said that out loud and laughs so loud his own ears ring. the music isn’t even music anymore, it’s just these huge tidal waves that crash through yuta’s being, swaying him.

the stranger stays with him, and he keeps thanking them profusely, and they ask how old he is at some point, and he says, “i’m immortal and always will be!” and then he’s on his knees in a different place that’s even darker than the dance floor with a dick in his mouth, and everything’s still very sparkly.

he tries to talk but only rounded sounds come out, and he remembers what he’s doing, and laughs, but there’s a hand in his hair pulling hard, so he stops. he sits there on his knees for time that is uncountable, an imaginary number of minutes, and then there’s a lack of motion and no one’s touching him, so he lays down on the floor, sweat slipping sideways over the bridge of his nose.

time.

“oh my god, what are you doing!” krystal says, sort of giggling, and then he’s being hauled up back onto his feet. his head fucking hurts.

“what,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“oh, sweet boy, you’re _so_ fucked up — here, my friend’s coming to pick us up, drink some water, ok?”

yuta takes the bottle and chugs about half, but immediately regrets it because his stomach is churning uncomfortably.

krystal’s friend is called _luna,_ and yuta’s obsessed with that name, won’t stop saying it like a prayer into the upholstery of the backseat, until his stomach churns again.

“ugh,” he says, and miraculously krystal understands because she shoves a plastic bag in front of his face just in time for him to puke up every single one of his internal organs. 

luna makes a noise of disapproval, and yuta is so embarrassed, but he can’t even apologize because everything _sucks_ so bad now, and he can feel the mesh of his shirt on his chest and he can feel the motion of the car and he can see the familiar street names that lead back to his house, and he’s so goddamn _sad._

he starts crying, couldn’t stop himself if he wanted, but he bites his lips hard and doesn’t make any noise. his tears are fucking endless, but the drive is fucking fast, and he walks into his bedroom at five in the morning sobbing, because his chest hurts and his head hurts and he doesn’t know why but he’s sadder than anyone has ever been in the history of the entire universe, and he doesn’t know how to stop.

he cries, and keeps crying, and it won’t _stop,_ and it’s only when the sun is all the way up, burning his back through the mesh he’s still wearing, that he comes up with an answer.

he’s sad because that was the first time, maybe in his life, that he’s been _happy._

he was so fucking happy. and it ended. and he looks down, down, into that uncharted darkness inside of him, and he knows, more sure of this than he’s been of anything, that this is what he’s always wanted. that everything in his life has been leading up to this, that when the big bang happened and all those atoms scattered across the universe, the carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and plasma that make him up were already headed here. it’s bigger than his dna, a chemical imbalance.

he looks into the darkness and the cold, cold eye of fate looks back, and he knows there’s no return. that he will find this feeling again, and again, and he cries so hard. he sobs for himself and for his mother and for his sister and for everyone he knows he will hurt, and he sobs for eve, of course, because now he knows, he _knows_ that the apple was just too sweet. that the other fruits in the garden simply could not compare, that the skin was so dazzlingly red and the flesh was so terribly crisp that it wasn’t even a choice.

his mother comes in to say goodbye before work, and he hasn’t stopped crying, and he can’t answer her questions, he can’t tell her what’s wrong. he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. she holds him until she’s late for work, and she puts cash on the table for dinner, and yuta cries until the sun goes back down, until the world stops staring at him, until the endlessness ends.

+

when yuta was eighteen, he met sicheng.

yuta is at college, now, in the big city, and there is a boy named sicheng in his modern media class. and yuta wants to have him.

love is nearly the only drug yuta hasn’t tried, at this point, and when it hits, he is completely unprepared.

sicheng is so perfect, he’s handsome and talks slow and low and one of his ears is pointier than the other, and, the most perfect thing of all, he loves yuta. and suddenly, yuta’s whole philosophy is crumbling under his feet, because look at him! he’s happy, and he’s _sober_ (sometimes), and he’s loved, and he hasn’t stopped doing lines on the weekends, but it doesn’t fucking matter, because sicheng is kissing him, sicheng is telling him he _loves_ him, sicheng is moaning into his ear in the alcove that everyone has sex in in the student union, and yuta is happy?!

he truly can’t get enough.

perhaps this should be the first warning sign, but he’s running, now, because he’s _found_ it, and it doesn’t have to ruin his life, and each time he’s with sicheng he’s thinking about how wrong he was, when he was seventeen, about how he’s found a loophole in the tightly woven fabric of his doom. he’s cheated the universe, and he won’t be caught, he’ll run and he’ll run and drag sicheng along with him, and no one has to know about the other stuff.

he even starts to think, perhaps, that he was never doomed, that he was just a stupid teenager, that everyone feels like that at some point. 

then, they go home for the holidays.

which is fine, yuta expects it, he’s been preparing. they’ll facetime every day and yuta will get good morning and good night texts, and it’ll be fine.

what he doesn’t expect, though, is his appendix deciding to commit ritual suicide inside his body four days before christmas.

it’s fine — the surgery goes fine, he only stays in the hospital one night, sicheng is worried as hell, and yuta gets ice cream on the way back home; it’s fine.

but then, as he methodically takes the assortment of prescribed antibiotics and painkillers the doctors prescribed, the last one’s name looks familiar. he tips the bottle, and a large, white pill falls into his hand. on it, a word is engraved.

percocet.

now, yuta’s not an idiot.

but also, yuta is kind of an idiot. and he misses sicheng. and, technically, if a doctor gives it to you, you're _supposed_ to take it. he swallows it dry.

\+ 

when yuta was nineteen, he ran out of his percocet prescription. when yuta was nineteen, he found out you can inject heroin instead of just smoking it.

it goes like this: yuta kisses sicheng goodbye on friday night. on saturday morning, he texts one jung jaehyun, the campus weed dealer, asking if he has anything else besides that kind kind bud. jaehyun tells him no, he doesn’t, but he knows of a party tonight where people will be selling harder stuff, but to be careful; it’s not a college party. yuta scoffs, reassures jaehyun that he’s been to every kind of party there is, and puts together an outfit.

ok, so, maybe he hasn’t been to _every_ kind of party.

first of all, it’s really more of an orgy, and yuta spots at least four questionably consensual things happening as soon as he walks in. there’s a bong and lines on the table, tin foil and a pipe on the kitchen counter. also, two of the guys here are strapped. 

yuta is going to leave, honestly, hand to god, he is. he’s way fucking out of his depth here, and not really trying to get arrested. but then, he sees krystal.

he stops in his tracks, on his way back to the front door. he hasn’t seen her since graduation, he didn’t even know she was in _town._ she’s blonde, now, and beautiful as ever, but something’s… not. quite right. it could be the angle, the light, but — she turns, and no, no, it’s something else. her face is all wrong — tired and gaunt and sharp. her skin, always flushed with life in high school, is sallow. she’s smiling, but it’s… strange.

(what they don’t tell you is how the shadows creep in. how cheekbones can get so sharp and eyes can get so hollow that there are parts of the face that light simply refuses to hit anymore. no matter which way they turn, no matter if it’s the sunniest summer day, there are these parts of the face — the temples, the dips in cheeks where perhaps dimples used to be — that shadows remain, moved in to stay.

it is not just the weight loss. it is something else. something evil that finds you and curls up in your bones when you are destroying yourself so quickly. but yuta doesn’t know that yet.)

“yuta?!” krystal says, wide-eyed, turned away from whatever conversation she’d been having. she makes her way over, and yuta forces himself not to look at her legs, at how the joints of her knees are bigger than her thighs.

“krystal,” he says, echoing her surprise. she grips his forearms, and she’s so — cold.

“what the fuck are you doing here?!” she says, at the same volume she’d used when across the room.

“i — krystal, i — what the fuck are _you_ doing here?” he asks, eyes darting to another girl on one of the couches, completely out of it, men around her. krystal follows his gaze, and her smile falls.

“i’m… hey,” she says suddenly, icy hands coming up to frame his face.

“do you wanna go in the back? we’ll catch up.”

and it all sounds so simple, put like that. yuta is at this place he doesn’t know, with people he doesn’t like, and here’s krystal, krystal who wore body glitter into advanced algebra and stuck her tongue out at the vice principal during a pep rally.

and yuta thinks that surely whatever follows can’t be all bad.

(there are moments, probably, that are meant to happen. things that are immutable in this universe. yuta thinks krystal being at this party was probably one of those things.)

it happens like this: yuta follows krystal to the back, and this room is very much darker than the rest of the house. there’s a lava lamp on the floor and needles on the table. and in the dim orange glow of that fucking lava lamp, yuta sees them. track marks in krystal’s arms. it’s fucking scary. he’s _scared._ but he’s also out of percocet.

krystal says, “ever shot up before?”

and yuta says, “no,”

and despite the circumstances, it’s probably krystal that saves his life that night, because she doesn’t let any of the other people in the room measure the hit, and she ties the strip of latex around his arm very loosely, and she kisses his cheek and tells him to “relax, nakamoto yuta, keep those eyes open for me,” and she sits next to him the whole time, never leaving, just gently carding her cool fingers through his hair.

at some point she asks him, “are you living on campus now, sweet boy?” and yuta must say something back, because she hums and removes his phone from his pocket.

“who do you want to pick you up? i’ll just say the names and you give me a yes or no, alright?”

yuta says, “hm,” and krystal lists off a few contacts — people from his classes, his sister.

“how about this sicheng person?” and yuta blinks hard and clears his throat, and carefully says, “nuh-uh,” and krystal frowns.

“why not? seems like he loves you something fierce, if these texts are anything to go by,” and she’s smiling, he can tell, but he gives the best shake of his head he can. the thought of sicheng — of _sicheng,_ who is perfect, of sicheng who _loves_ him, picking up his limp and heavy body, seeing the irritated skin at the pit of his elbow — yuta feels nauseous. 

“how about jaehyun?”

and so, this is how yuta ends up, high out of his mind, in the passenger seat of jung jaehyun’s two-thousand-and-seventeen lexus lc. it absolutely reeks of weed in here, and yuta worries about a contact high for a moment before remembering he was just injected with literal poison.

jaehyun keeps casting him worried looks when they’re stopped at red lights, and he stops at a taco bell to get yuta something to drink. it’s a fucking baja blast, for some reason, but yuta sips it diligently once he can feel his hands again.

“i told you to be careful, man,” jaehyun says, slinging yuta’s arm around his shoulders and bodily lifting him out of the car. 

“_was_ careful,” yuta mumbles, even though he wasn’t. he stumbles, but gets his bearings after a moment.

“i’m — i really shouldn’t have told you about that party, god, you — you can’t be messing with injectables like this. it’s — you’ll,” he stops, swallowing hard. there are a couple minutes of silence as they make their way to the dorms.

“what,” yuta says, once they’re in the elevator to his floor.

jaehyun doesn’t say anything, and yuta almost thinks he didn’t actually get his words out, but then the doors slide open and jaehyun leans him against the wall while he fiddles with the unfamiliar keys.

the lock slides back and jaehyun says, very quietly, “you can’t feel like this forever, yuta.”

and then the door opens, and there’s sicheng, brows furrowed in concern, hair mussed like from sleeping.

“hey, i waited for you,” he says, eyeing jaehyun. yuta shakes himself a little, taking an unsteady step forward and letting sicheng catch him.

“hey, cheng,” yuta says, making sure he uses his tongue to enunciate. sicheng looks down at him, expression unreadable.

“are… you ok? what… what happened?” the second question is directed at jaehyun, who wrings his hands, shifting between feet.

“uh, yeah, he’ll be fine, um…” he says, and then bites his lip and hands sicheng yuta’s keys and takes off, down the stairwell.

sicheng helps yuta into his room, and yuta, still warm and happy, tries to kiss him.

“babe — no, here,” he lowers yuta carefully onto his bed, settling next to him and putting the back of his hand to yuta’s forehead.

“what’s wrong? tell me, please?”

yuta buries his face in sicheng’s shoulder, inhaling, fading fast.

“mmm just so tired,” he says, and the next memory he has is sicheng holding him close under the covers, telling him that he loves him so much, and please don’t die, and wake up soon.

+

when yuta was twenty, he overdosed for the first time.

he’s on the couch again, staring at that damn lava lamp, and it’s not that his heart _stops,_ but it just… takes a break. for a second.

krystal saves his life for the second time, and when yuta comes to, his nose is burning and she’s leaning over him, pupils blown, narcan cradled in her cold, cold hands.

yuta doesn’t tell sicheng, but he finds out anyway.

+

when yuta was twenty-one, sicheng broke up with him.

“no,” sicheng says.

yuta, hands shaking, knees scuffed red, scoffs.

“_no,_ what do you mean ‘no,’ sicheng?” he says, contemptuous, marching over to the jacket slung over the computer chair, hands reaching into the pockets.

“i mean _no,_ yuta. i won’t. i won’t.”

yuta’s nails scrape the seam of the pocket, and he tries the other one, fingers closing around air. he sighs, frustrated, straightens up and puts his hands on his hips.

“so what is this, huh?” he runs his tongue over his teeth, foot rabbiting against the carpet.

“some last ditch effort to get on your high fucking horse? ‘cause that ship sailed, sicheng. and _sunk._ give me the money.”

sicheng swallows, his hands are in fists.

“i won’t.”

yuta blinks hard, rubs his thumb over his brow. he glances around, but sicheng’s brown leather wallet is nowhere.

“why not?” but he doesn’t really want to know, he’s just stalling, stalling before sicheng gets the nerve up and actually-for-real kicks him out. 

“you _know_ why,” sicheng says, and his voice breaks over that second word, and yuta dully feels the pain of it somewhere in his chest, but his headache is getting worse. with sweat blurring his vision and cramps locking up his muscles, this looks like a good thing. sicheng will break, and yuta just has to focus on applying the pressure correctly.

he lets himself soften, just barely, allows the tears already built up from the pain to well at the corners of his eyes. he swallows and makes his voice go soft, so soft for sicheng.

“you’re right,” he says, and sicheng’s eyebrows draw together, he looks so _worried,_ he’s going to break. yuta takes a slow step forward.

“you’re right, baby, i’m so sorry,” he says, forcing his shoulders down, letting sicheng see where his collarbones stick out too far, showing off his weakness, his desperation.

“please forgive me, i know i’m being so horrible to you,” and it’s just a whisper, now that he’s up close, now that sicheng looks down at him with so much emotion it burns in yuta’s already burning body. just a little bit more. god forgive him.

“you know i’m so sorry, right? you know how bad it hurts for me? i wanna die for doing this, baby.”

sicheng’s lips part almost involuntarily, a wet, shaking sound falling from his mouth.

“it’s _ok,”_ he says, and yuta lets him pull him close, heart beating much too fast, he barely remembers to put his arms around sicheng’s waist.

“it’s ok, i’m so _sorry,_ i know, i know, i just want to _help_ you but — but you keep getting _worse,”_ he says, so lost, so sad. here it is. god fucking forgive him.

yuta pulls back, just a little, so he can see sicheng’s face, and forces his hand still so he can put it on sicheng’s cheek.

“i know, and i _promise,_ i swear to god, i’m gonna get help soon, i promise, ok? but, but for right now i just — i can’t handle it anymore it hurts so _bad,”_ he says, nearly wailing, letting his knees shake, making sicheng support him more fully around the waist.

“you _know_ i wouldn’t ask, not you, not you baby, if it wasn’t so bad but it _is_ and i just need it, ok?” he wipes a tear as it falls from sicheng’s lash line, letting it run into his palm, dry skin sucking it up and keeping it forever.

“it’s just, it’s just _two_ seconds, you know? two seconds where i don’t have to think about how fucking miserable i am. how fucking much i _hurt._ please, baby, _please,_ i’ll never ask again, _please.”_

sicheng looks into his eyes, and yuta buries the lies deep inside, makes himself believe it, too, a sparkling crystalline illusion.

_yes, sicheng, i would never lie to you, i won’t ask again, i really will get help, it’s all true, you know it is, you love me, you love me still, right?_

and sicheng cups yuta’s jaw in his hands, so gentle, so terrified, like holding a bomb, like holding a rabid dog gone docile for the moment. yuta makes his eyes shine, the only part of him not yet deteriorated, the part that sicheng will recognize, and he parts his lips, and hopes to god that he looks a little bit pretty, willing whatever beauty is left there to last just a moment longer.

yuta isn’t expecting it, but sicheng kisses him, and it only takes him a moment to part his lips, to move closer, to put some strength back into his legs and push himself up onto his toes. yuta knows this kiss. it’s their first kiss. sicheng puts his hands at the small of his back, and yuta is there again, outside the dorms, crickets chirping, moon shining down on them. all sweet, no tongue, though they both want to, but it’s only their second date, and it’s still so special, so quiet between them.

(yuta will invite him up next week after seeing a concert at the bar down the street, but he didn't know that, not yet, so he savored it all.)

he kisses sicheng, on that night, and remembers how his lips feel, what he tastes like, the smooth of his cheek on yuta’s nose, because he needs to save it for later, he needs to keep these things forever, the idea of forgetting this is worse than dying.

and all at once, yuta realizes that he needs to do the same thing, right now, in sicheng’s dorm room. because sicheng isn’t giving him their first kiss again, he’s giving him their last.

but it’s too late, now, sicheng is pulling away, turning his face too quickly for yuta to catch his expression, and it’s over.

yuta barely registers the dry slide of cash into his palm, but his fingers automatically hold it tight, as if they’re still accounting for what yuta’s momentarily forgotten.

sicheng says, “this is the last time,” and yuta can’t even look at him. he glances down at the bills, knowing it’s enough, knowing sicheng knows how much it is, by now. hates himself.

he says, “thanks,” but he doesn’t even know if his voice comes out.

he walks out of the dorm, makes it five paces down the street. stops. hates himself. counts the money again. he’s dissociating, he knows, probably gone before sicheng even opened the door, in some way.

he waits on the corner in a daze, follows krystal to their dealer and then back to her car, vaguely registers it’s raining.

she wraps the latex around his bicep, puts one end of it between his teeth, and he automatically pulls. the needle is nothing. but when the tourniquet comes off, it’s everything.

he can breathe. he doesn’t have to think about breathing, his chest just does it. his muscles unclench. he thinks that there isn’t anything like this feeling, but immediately knows that’s not true, like a reflex. his heart beating in protest — _no, that’s not right._ sicheng’s a pretty good dupe, after all.

one of the first times he’d done this, the guy sitting next to him caught him when he started to fall, lowered him horizontal onto the dirty couch. he asked, “how do you feel?”

and yuta vaguely remembers looking at the lava lamp and mumbling something so juvenile; “cool,” or something like it.

but now, as krystal puts her cold hand through his matted, unwashed hair, someone on the radio telling him the forecast of cloudy skies this week, the only word for this feeling that comes to mind is

lonely.


	2. feel the morning on my face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> play it again, but flip the record.
> 
> the first time jaehyun met nakamoto yuta, it was at a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go again! let's see what everyone else was up to during yuta's twenty-first year on campus.  
again, trigger warning for detailed talk of drugs and drug use. love u <3

the first time kun met nakamoto yuta, it was in the main kitchen in their dorm, at three am.

kun pads onto the tile with socked feet, intending to fetch a glass of water for doyoung, whose cold is keeping him up coughing, but he stops in his tracks at the sound of sobbing. it’s a college dorm, so it’s not like this is completely out of the ordinary, but as kun moves closer, studies the figure curled under the anemic light from the window, he knows it’s something more than a failing grade.

“yuta,” he says, not in askance, because the wiry limbs and red-streaked hair are unmistakable. this may be the first time they’ve talked, but it’s not the first time kun’s seen him. he drifts through the halls like a ghost, thin and wan and just barely alive.

sometimes sicheng carries him on his back into his room, yuta’s cheek pressed into his shoulder, mouth open, eyes nothing more than a reflection of whatever’s around him. he mutters in japanese and sicheng says, “i know, darling, i know. just rest.” and kun watches them from the other side of the hall, feeling like the worst kind of peeping tom, but unable to look away. yuta’s eyes roll right over him when sicheng opens the door on those nights, and sometimes he says something. something like, “how do i look?”

and sicheng pushes the door open and says, “beautiful, angel, as always.” and the door shuts behind them.

kun swallows in the present, and he says again, “yuta.” the crying abruptly stops, but yuta doesn’t lift his head from where it’s buried in his knees, arms creating a cocoon. kun makes his way over nearly soundlessly, and carefully lowers himself to the floor next to yuta. not too close, though.

yuta lifts his head, after a moment, and his profile is just barely illuminated, tears shining on his cheeks, on his lips. his hair is faded fire, pulled tightly into a greasy ponytail at the back of his head. he breathes, but not normally. he breathes like it’s work.

he says, “you live across the hall,” not looking at kun.

and kun says, “yes.”

yuta says, “do you want to see something terrible?” and doesn’t wait for an answer, just shifts himself facing kun, and pulls the sleeves of his hoodie up around his biceps.

there, in the crooks of his elbows, are track marks, very many of them, and kun is struck by how different they are from the pictures in his textbooks, or on tv. they are dull bruises, some yellow and brown, some blue, some black, one, on his right arm, is still red, brand new. yuta purses his lips as he also examines them, shifting his arms back and forth so the dim light hits them.

“do you know what will happen?” 

and kun shakes his head, because he doesn’t. yuta smiles faintly, like it’s the only expression he remembers how to make.

“my veins will shrivel up. the needle won’t fit anymore. i’ll have to find another place. one lady i know uses her neck.” he blinks up into the darkness, finally meets kun’s eyes.

“it will kill me. i’ll overdose again, and my heart will stop. it’s uglier with stimulants or pills — you throw up all over yourself, and you’re on your back so the vomit runs back down your throat and you can’t breathe like that, so you suffocate."

he takes another breath, again, like it's so laborious, one of the hardest things to do.

“but this is different. i won’t even know it’s happening. first my breath will slow, until my body forgets to move my lungs, and then my heart.” he grabs kun’s hand out of his lap, clutching it with shaking, cold fingers and holding it to his chest, over that very heart. his pulse is slow, so slow.

“it barely wants to work now. do you know how crazy it is to be able to feel your own heart giving up on you? you can feel it, like it’s any other muscle, straining… _bu…… bump.”_

kun can feel it, under his palm. _bu……… bump._

he didn’t know a heart could beat so slow. he looks back up at yuta, at those eyes. like heated glass, liquid and unbearable to touch. yuta lets go of kun’s hand, scoots away, puts his chin back on his knees.

“when i'm gone, someone tell that to mark lee. that it doesn't hurt, when your heart stops," he murmurs, then glances up at kun. he holds his hand out in front of him, putting up two bony fingers.

“it's happened to me twice, so far." he taps the tips of his forefingers.

“i would tell you what it feels like, but it doesn’t. there’s no other feeling in the world like it.”

silence.

yuta, suddenly jittery, sits up straight again, pulls his hair loose and shakes it around his face. it falls to his chin, wavy and tangled. he licks his lips, pulls his sleeves back down.

“how do i look? good, i bet. i’m so skinny now. maybe like a vampire.” he grins, and his teeth shine.

kun takes a deep breath, scoots close again. he rolls up yuta’s right sleeve and runs his thumb over the fresh puncture.

“we should clean that, before it gets infected.”

yuta’s face falls. it’s only for a second, but kun thinks it’s the saddest he’s seen a person look.

when he comes back with the disinfectant, yuta’s gone.

-

the first time doyoung met nakamoto yuta, it was a tuesday.

such a fucking unnassuming day, tuesday is. like, it’s not the middle of the week, it’s not the beginning, not the end, not even thursday which is at least _almost_ the end. doyoung hates tuesdays. and leave it to nakamoto yuta to give him one more reason.

kun needs a lemon for diner, and yuta, the freak he is, hoards all citrus fruits in his room like some kind of wild ferret. doyoung makes his way down the hall, and it’s tuesday, so he’s already in a bad mood, so when yuta doesn’t answer immediately he gets frustrated.

“come on, yuta, open up!” he says, knocks again. nothing.

something cold and terrible starts to curl in doyoung’s bones, but he ignores it. yuta is a fucking trainwreck — everyone knows it, everyone hears him puking in the communal bathrooms, and everyone’s been begged for money at least once by him. how he’s still even _enrolled,_ doyoung doesn’t know; the guy’s clearly _on_ something — zero tolerance policy at its finest, he supposes.

frankly, doyoung’s been waiting for yuta to crash and burn this whole semester, un-kosher as it is. fitting, then, that doyoung should be the one to open the unlocked door to his room and find him, lying on the floor, barely breathing.

“holy fuck,” he breathes, then shouts for kun, fumbling his phone out of his pocket.

he kneels next to yuta’s still body, puts a hand on the sweat-soaked tank top to find a heartbeat. nothing. nothing. doyoung can’t feel his hands. surely this can't be happening, not to him. he's not the one that was supposed to do this. it was supposed to be sicheng, or maybe jungwoo, who is just down the hall. not him.

an emergency operator picks up and he rattles off the college address, at which point they tell him they’re sending an ambulance, but he should contact the campus medics right away if he hasn’t already. and, fuck, he feels so stupid, but then kun is there, already dialing the campus emergency line, he feels a little steadier, just a bit.

kun hangs up and promptly lays his head where doyoung had just had his hand, listening.

“do you think he has a narcan,” kun murmurs, almost to himself, but doyoung quickly looks around the room.

“i — no? _someone_ has to, though, right?”

kun sits up, then, eyes wide.

“oh, fuck, _sicheng._ he’s — i should call, him, right? i should call him,” and he stands, unlocking his phone again.

sicheng arrives at almost the same time as the campus medics, clutching a narcan box in a white-knuckled grip. he’s out of breath, staring at yuta, mumbling nonsensical mandarin.

a medic takes the box from him, and that seems to shake him out of the state, and he says,

“i always — always keep one… always. just in case. just in case.”

kun takes his hand, and the medics get to work.

within fifteen minutes, yuta is in an ambulance, sicheng is following in his car, and doyoung and kun are back in their own dorm, kind of just standing there.

“are you ok?” kun asks, and doyoung shrugs.

he really does fucking hate tuesdays.

-

the first time jaehyun met nakamoto yuta, it was at a party.

he’s selling, as usual, and amber never minds if he does, so long as it never makes trouble. he’s heard of yuta, of course; he’s kind of infamous on the grimier side of campus. he can cut lines so neat you hardly even need to inhale. he’s the type you know is gonna end up in rehab, but still hope to god he doesn’t, because he’s not a bad dude.

jaehyun’s been keeping an eye on him, just because he’s had four bumps already and is nursing a mixed drink, and also it’s not exactly a hard thing to do. yuta is currently dancing his absolute bones out, thrashing next to some freshman who looks mildly intimidated.

despite keeping a lookout, jaehyun still isn’t expecting it when yuta grabs him by the forearms ten minutes later and starts tugging him toward the middle of the room.

“let’s _dance,_ come on!”

jaehyun tries to shake him off, but his grip is, well, unnaturally enhanced.

“no thanks,” he says, and yuta pouts dramatically.

“you sell drugs and you’re the most boring man in the world, how is that even _possible,”_ he says, lifting jaehyun’s arm above himself and twirling under it.

jaehyun sighs, but lets yuta pull him out into the crowd, swaying awkwardly while yuta circles him in leaps of varying heights and attempts to give him some sort of standing-lap-dance. he keeps twirling further and further away, and jaehyun doesn't know how it happens, but he loses track of yuta.

by the time he finds him again he’s standing next to one of the lamps that casts patterned shapes on the ceiling, staring up at the shifting colors.

jaehyun says, “are you ok?”

and yuta looks at him, pupils so far dilated his irises are only rings of dark brown. he's sweating, and he looks younger than he is because of the look on his face. 

he blinks, and a tear falls down his cheek, mixing with the sweat there, and he says, “i’m so happy.”

-

the first time jungwoo met nakamoto yuta, they were both high.

jungwoo, just on some of jaehyun’s indica, but yuta is clearly on something much stronger, and he’s not happy about it.

“think it was laced,” he says, words slurred.

“head hurts.”

jungwoo frowns, tucks some hair behind yuta’s ear, and feels his forehead. it’s night, they’re in the library; jungwoo had been pretending to study until yuta stumbled in and collapsed on the couch next to him. they don’t know each other, just in passing at parties, in lecture halls.

“do you need anything?” he asks, because that seems like the right thing to say. yuta shakes his head, settles it in jungwoo’s lap.

“you’re nice,” he sighs, eyes fluttering shut. jungwoo laughs a little and says, “thank you very much. you’re quite the talk of the campus right now, you know.” yuta frowns.

“why?”

jungwoo smooths one his eyebrows with his thumb.

“seems like you’re having a hard time, i think. some people are worried about you.”

yuta’s eyes fall open again, but he’s not looking at anything in particular.

“hate it when this happens.”

“what,” jungwoo asks, thumbing over the bridge of his nose. his skin is oily, thin.

“i pay good money to be happy, you know. and sometimes it doesn’t even work.” he blinks, slow.

“i am all alone, jungwoo.”

-

the first time mark lee met nakamoto yuta, it was in the middle of the quad.

mark has been working up the courage to speak to yuta for weeks, now; they’re in the same humanities class, but he doesn’t think yuta knows that.

it’s really not like him to confront near strangers in public, but this he has to do. he _has_ to know. and this is the only time of day he sees yuta, before class, because he usually sneaks out early so there’s no chance of catching him after.

yuta is a few feet away, looking pale and irritable as always, hair pushed away from his face by a headband. mark takes a breath, and stands firmly in yuta’s path.

“um, yuta?”

he looks up, surprised, annoyed.

“what?”

mark swallows.

“uh, i, uh, just wanted to ask you something?”

yuta licks his lips, though they’re still chapped.

“what, you wanna know who i’m buying from or something?” he snaps, pulling his sleeves down self-consciously. mark frowns, ignores the nausea building in his stomach.

“no, i — no. my… um, my brother overdosed last year.”

yuta stiffens, pales even further if that’s possible, but doesn’t say anything.

“i want to know. i want to know how it feels.”

yuta stares at him for a moment. then, he leans in close, and from here mark can see exactly how his skull sits in his face, because the skin is pulled tight around it. it’s too familiar.

“no you don’t,” yuta says. he steps brusquely around mark, but lingers.

“and i’m not your fucking brother. stay away from me.”

today, yuta doesn’t even bother staying for attendance.

-

it’s almost funny, how they all avoid each other. doyoung and kun stick together, insulated in their own little perfect bubble where yuta hardly ever existed. jaehyun stops selling for a month out of some twisted sense of solidarity or maybe guilt. jungwoo gives sicheng these little sympathetic pouts whenever he sees him, and mark lee walks around campus pale-faced and shaken, which sicheng resents, because he hardly even knew yuta.

there’s not as much hubbub on campus as you’d expect — yuta didn’t _die,_ after all, so it’s not like they’re flying the flag half-mast or anything. there’s an extra stack of pamphlets in the substance abuse section of the self-help library in the health center, but that’s it. sicheng takes one.

unfortunately, the ice age is thawed against their will, because the resident advisor for their dorm is lee taeyong, and lee taeyong has the unfortunate and incurable condition of Wanting To Help. he can’t just let people be miserable — sicheng vividly remembers him cornering yuta and passing on the numbers of various rehabilitation centers in the area.

so, within two weeks of yuta’s overdose, the four of them (excluding taeyong; jaehyun’s in a different building, and mark lee is just a freshman) are gathered in the common room downstairs, taeyong perched, sympathetic and bright-eyed, on the edge of the table.

“i’m sure you all can guess why i invited you,” he says, meek and careful.

“i’m not saying you _have_ to talk — not to me, not to each other, but i do think you need to realize that — that what happened was a big deal. and it’s ok not to be ok about it.” he licks his lips, looking satisfied; he probably practiced that about twenty times in the mirror before he came downstairs.

they all sit in uncomfortable silence for the next five minutes, and sicheng wonders how long taeyong will keep them here; he has a paper due tonight. but then, doyoung, shaking his dark hair out of his wide eyes impatiently, speaks.

“well, i’m sure as hell not fucking ok about it.” everyone looks to him, kun concerned, taeyong delighted, jungwoo curious. sicheng already doesn’t like the sound of this.

“i mean, this was going on for _months,_ maybe longer, everyone knew,” his eyes dart to sicheng, “and no one did anything?” kun puts a gentle hand on doyoung’s shoulder, and taeyong swallows.

“doyoung, thank you for expressing that. i’m sure we all find it distressing that… that the situation became so dire, but —”

“no, i’m not talking about that,” doyoung interrupts, and sicheng curls his hands into fists.

“i’m _saying_ why the fuck was he still on campus? students have been expelled for less, i’m sure? and he was just allowed to engage in regular lawbreaking under the dean’s nose; yeah that sounds real fucking fair to the rest of us.”

there is silence like no other silence, tempered and so desperate to break. 

taeyong says, “well,” at the same time sicheng says, “fuck you.”

doyoung raises an eyebrow, haughty and fucking insufferable.

“look, sicheng, i’m sorry your boyfriend was an insatiable junkie, but you can’t deny that his… lifestyle affected everyone in a negative way.”

sicheng’s blood is boiling.

“he’s not dead.”

doyoung falters.

“what?”

“he’s not fucking _dead._ you used past tense.”

doyoung sputters for a second, manages to get out something like, “well — right.”

taeyong opens his mouth again but sicheng’s not done. 

“and let me tell you something else, doyoung. while you were letting kun rub up against you next to heat lamp or however it is that reptiles like you have sex, yuta was in fucking pain. we were right across the hall, and he was withdrawing nearly every night, and he was shaking, and his muscles wouldn’t stop cramping, and he was begging me to either go out and buy him a dose, or just let him die. so just give that a little bit of thought before you declare that _you,_ kim doyoung, a fucking stats major with a four-point-oh and a perfect relationship, have had the hardest time. ok?” 

he sits back in his chair, nails digging into the meat of his palms. kun is leaning in to say something in doyoung's ear, but doyoung is red-faced, angry.

“_you_ weren’t there when i found him. i saw it. i know, so don’t fucking condescend to me. i just think it’s kind of wild that he knew what was happening, how many people he was hurting, and just? carried on! i mean how do you even do that, anyway? how do you just. decide one day, like, ‘i think i’ll try heroin. getting into heroin seems like an exciting idea.’ how much of a fucking idiot do you have to be, how _selfish_ do you have to b —”

sicheng stands, and he’s going to punch him, he’s honest to god going to punch kim doyoung hard enough to knock out at least two of those perfectly straight teeth; there’s way too many of them in his mouth, anyway, but then jungwoo says,

“sicheng, have you talked to him?”

sicheng stops, chest heaving, in the middle of the room, whole body tense.

“what?”

jungwoo shifts, folds his hands in his lap.

“i was wondering if you’ve talked to yuta at all, since he left?”

and he’s so polite about it, so tactful, that all the anger sort of runs out of sicheng. he turns to face jungwoo.

“no. no, they take your phone in detox. i don’t know when he’ll get it back.”

jungwoo nods sagely, eyes downcast, then says, quietly,

“he must be so lonely.”

at which point, sicheng starts crying.

-

five days later, doyoung is grudgingly driving them up to the rehab center in his mom’s toyota. taeyong made them apologize to each other like kindergartners, and when sicheng said he just wants to see yuta, doyoung offered. maybe he feels guilty, but sicheng doesn't really care. it’s forty-five minutes from the college, and mark lee has tagged along, for some reason, but sicheng doesn’t have the energy to tell any of them to fuck off. he’s going to see yuta, that’s kind of all he can focus on at the moment.

the rehab center is tucked into a plaza in the city, between an antique furniture store and an office building, across from a burger king. the check-in process is ridiculous, since they’re not family, and they get everything taken except their phones, and they have to see him publicly, out back in the common area. sicheng is wearing a clip-on tag that says _visitor #47._

yuta is already outside, sitting at one of the tables, but his back is to them. as much of an asshole doyoung is, he lets sicheng go out first.

it’s fucking terrifying. sicheng’s never been more nervous about anything in his life. he doesn’t know what he’s expecting, he thinks he still has the image of yuta lying on his dorm carpet, half-dead, permanently seared into his mind. perhaps he's expecting a corpse. but when yuta turns, sicheng almost doesn’t recognize him. 

it’s like he’s been living with — with the yuta addicted and broken and dying so very slowly, for so long, that he forgot how he was supposed to look. how he looked when they met. 

the red has faded almost completely from his hair, leaving it mostly dark again with the bleached sections tucked away, and he’s wearing a tank-top, which sicheng hasn’t seen him wear in almost a year. the track marks are already fading. he’s still a bit pale, but his skin actually looks alive, not dehydrated and cracking in places. his arms have filled out again. sicheng can only see the top lines of his collarbones.

then, sicheng brings himself to look at yuta’s face, and… fuck.

sicheng can’t stop himself from crying, he just can’t. for so long — an eternity, it feels like — yuta has asked him how he looks, if he’s beautiful, and it’s not that sicheng lied, because he didn’t, because yuta was always beautiful to him, even when he was dying, even when he was high, but this is different.

sicheng can’t even describe it in detail, it’s just like — he has cheeks again, not just cheekbones. things like that. and his eyes.

his eyes, for the first time in so long, are clear. sharp, focused. sober. yuta is so smart, sicheng remembers. yuta helped him with calculus homework the first few months they were together. 

and then, yuta smiles, and sicheng cries harder, because god. god, he missed that. a yuta smile that doesn’t look empty, doesn’t look like it hurts, doesn’t look strange or fake or goofed.

yuta wraps him in a hug, a real one, one that’s warm and soft, and sicheng can feel his heart, so strong, against his chest. it takes him four minutes to get control of himself, and yuta holds him the whole time, and there’s only about a minute of awkward small talk before yuta says, 

“i’m sorry.”

sicheng looks up, confused, but yuta just smiles, again, and god, sicheng will never get tired of it.

“i’m sorry for everything, of course, all the pain i’ve caused you, sicheng, but i don’t know yet how to make up for it, so i’ll start by being specific. i’m sorry for that last day. when i asked you for money. it wasn’t fair, and i hurt you. and i lied. and i’m sorry.”

his hands are folded on the table, and he looks serious, like he’s practiced this.

sicheng says, “i…” and yuta shakes his head.

“you don’t have to forgive me. but i do have to apologize. not just because it’s step four, you know, but because…” he smiles sadly, this time, and sicheng forgot how many smiles he has, he wants to see them all again, brand new.

“because it’s you.”

sicheng doesn’t let himself cry again, but his voice is weak and wet when he says,

“i’m just so happy you’re getting better.”

yuta's smile changes; this one a little shy, brave, tired.

“trying.”

doyoung comes out next, greets them awkwardly, but yuta stands up and hugs him just like he did sicheng, full and unrestrained. he apologizes to doyoung, too.

he says, “what you had to see that day, and what you had to do, was unfair. it wasn’t fair that happened to you. and it was my fault. i know you want to pretend that maybe it didn’t bother you, but i hope you know it’s ok that it did. i hope you know that it was trauma and you’re traumatized, and that i’m sorry.”

similar things happen with kun, and jungwoo, but yuta moves to the side to speak with mark lee. they talk softly for a few minutes, and mark cries, and yuta hugs him, and when they’re walking back visiting hours are nearly over. sicheng doesn't kiss him, and yuta doesn't want him to, he can tell. they'll talk more later, and that's enough for now.

+

when yuta is twenty-two, he gets his six-month chip at a narcotics anonymous meeting, and sicheng kisses him on the cheek afterwards.

and yuta thinks that he was right after all, when he was seventeen and sobbing on his bed. he was doomed. he lived a life that no one should live. he hurt people, and he couldn’t help it, and he almost died, but.

but happiness isn’t impossible, even when he’s ridiculously sober at brunch enduring kim doyoung and qian kun making out in front of him.

yes, he was doomed, but there are things that come after a doom (even if it’s this).

yuta has wanted, all his life, to be happy.

and what most people don’t know is, when you spend your whole life looking for something, you tend to find it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading. this was really cathartic for me and i hope yall are doing well. my twitter is linked below.

**Author's Note:**

> phew! i know! very sad! don't worry, i'll have chapter two up within the next few days and it DOES have a happy ending ! i promise !!  
one time my creative writing professor told me that art isn't therapy and that is BIG wack so here i am. using art as therapy. i'll write down every single terrible thing that's ever happened to me, project it onto a boy band, AND post it on the internet for strangers to read ! i dont give a fuck!
> 
> u can find me on twitter  
[main](https://twitter.com/lookslikerain) [fic acc](https://twitter.com/rouxberrv)


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